Saturday, August 30, 2014

At the#BeigePressConference, it became eminently clear that “the strategy thing” is above Big Guy’s pay grade:

“I don't want to put the cart before the horse. We don't have a strategy yet,” before elaborating, “I think what I’ve seen in some of the news reports suggest that folks are getting a little further ahead of what we’re at than what we currently are.”

Imagine if Donald Rumsfeld had uttered that line! Or better yet, George W. Bush! Butt I digress; since we prefer to be led from behind,

Head ‘em up, move ‘em on!

and since Val is still on vacation, and since we were speaking of horses, BO handed the ISIS strategery-thing off to his Secretary of State for handling. John “F” Kerry is reporting for duty:

So we’re more or less stuck for now: a President who has no clue and no strategy and his Secretary of State who has no clue and the wrong strategy. We’re left holding the bag, wishin’ and HOPEin’ for the best; of course if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, wouldn’t they?

Friday, August 29, 2014

In case you missed it, GreetingsFromYonkers posted an insightful comment late Wednesday night on the limitations of Twitter in a semi-illiterate age:

“Gosh, wholly apart from whether we do or don't know what we do or don't know, I have an even more basic issue with Twitter.

It's the 140-character limit. Frankly, most people are not literate enough to work around this roadblock, which calls for exceptionally high vocabulary and syntax skills. Thus tweets end up being an incomprehensible mélange of clichéd abbreviations, or extremely superficial.

Let's all close our eyes and imagine what Twitter would be like in the hands of Dorothy Parker: a weapon of mass destruction! Can you imagine her tweeting this on September 15, 2008:

LEHMAN BROTHERS IN FLAMES. DID NOT KEATS WRITE "OZYMANDIAS" FOR EXACTLY SUCH AN OCCASION?

Jesus would have been a natural on Twitter too. His philosophical statement that became the cornerstone of Christianity, the Golden Rule, is also less than 140 characters.”

And then, yesterday, Sowsear posed the quintessential DP question: “What fresh hell is this?” I took the arrival of two Parkerisms in less than 24 hours as an omen of some kind, so I’m rolling with it; let’s all play “Famous People’s Tweets.” I see multiple ways to construct this; you can recycle famous people’s exact quotes as retweets on current events – let’s use one of Dorothy’s for illustration purposes (and speaking of illustrations, the use of a picture with your retweets is optional, butt welcome).

“Look at him, a rhinestone in the rough.”

Or, you can re-write a famous person’s original quote to suit current events. For example, Ernest Hemingway, commenting on the ease of tweeting: original quote: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

The 21st century retweet translates to:

#TweetingYourThoughts: “There is nothing to #tweeting. All you do is grab your #SmartPhone and #Bleed.”

Alternatively, you can use the style of a famous person to tweet on current events; Winston Churchill on #StopTweetingNow:

“#Never, #never, #never, #never, #NeverTweet!”

Or perhaps e.e.cummings on the demise of proper grammar in the Twitterverse, #usepropergrammar

“#idon’tcare #doasyouplease”

Or, equally fun, take a famous person’s actual quote and repurpose it into a similar but more contemporary observation; F. Scott Fitzgerald original quote: “You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”

In case you’ve forgotten, the role of those totally impartial organizations was to turn Right Wingers in to the authorities for telling lies about Big Guy - so the IRS could audit them.

“The Truth Team is a network of supporters of President Obama who are committed to responding to unfounded attacks and defending the President’s record. When you’re faced with someone who misrepresents the truth, you can find all the facts you need right here—along with ways to share the message with whoever needs to hear it.”

The newest formulation of the Truth Team is a science project at Indiana University funded by the National Science Foundation to “monitor “suspicious memes” and what it considers “false and misleading ideas,” with a major focus on political activity online.” Because we don’t already have enough college kids in Washington messing with us yet.

Butt don’t worry, the science project’s overseer assures us his intentions are pure:

“Truthy” claims to be non-partisan. However, the project’s lead investigator Filippo Menczer proclaims his support for numerous progressive advocacy groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority.

So don’t worry, fellow travelers will continue to have their right to express themselves with impunity. However, if your choose to express yourself in a fashion that we’ve deemed to be “hate speech” (criticism of BHO) or “misinformation” (non-progressive ideas) you will be tracked down by the “Truthy” Team and turned over to the IRS for auditing.

Sounds like Big Guy just used his magic pen to create a new Federal Department: the Ministry of Truth.

Maybe I should reactivate the MOTUS Truth Team, just to help sort out the TRUTH from the non-truthy truth.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

My high school physics teacher used to tell us that in order to understand physics you first had to be curious. His First Directive was “wonder about things.”

I bring this up only because it is a source of constant amazement to me how uncurious everyone around the Big White is - and by “everyone” I do mean EVERYWON. They receive a lot of information in their newsfeed that they tweet, text and Instagram on to others, along with an original witticism when the spirit moves them. If the “news” comes from a trusted source, i.e. somebody in their Twittersphere, they consider it “solid.” When they receive their own tweet back from someone else, they consider it confirmation. It’s the perfect closed loop information system.

Everyone is in constant contact with 100,000+ other people around the globe who are equally uncurious; everybody sending and receiving the same thing without wondering about what it means, or questioning its veracity. That’s why most White House staffers eventually end up with media jobs.

Unfortunately this type of closed loop information system can have drawbacks; like your talking points might be contradictory or work at cross purposes. Or your message gets garbled somewhere along the re-tweeted chain of added witticisms:

Like when you send someone out for a good high fiber cereal… and they come home with gay Cheerios.

At its worse, a closed loop system can result in a situation where nobody knows what to do about anything, as they suddenly discover they are devoid of any actual information that would allow them to know what they are doing. At that point the value of wondering about things you don’t know anything about becomes obvious.

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.” – Donald Rumsfeld

Suffice it to say we are now operating firmly in that most dangerous quadrant: “we don’t know what we don’t know.”

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

August 25 shall henceforth be know as the "Day of Rage" (brought to you by the Justice Brothers®) – a day on which we commemorate the slaughter of Michael Brown, the "gentle giant" who was just starting to get his life back together after graduating from Anger Management class.

Given that Michael roughed up 2 men in less than an hour before he was gunned down after assaulting a police officer in cold blood we can only assume he didn’t graduate in the top quintile of his class.

Did you hear his soaring oratory? His eloquent speechifying? That man has a gift; if he hadn’t decided to go into pimping civil rights activism he could have run for president. Oh wait…

And before you criticize the Reverend for fanning the flames of racial animus for personal gain, allow me to remind you that this is what Al does for a living. Were he not so successful pimping for the “No justice, no peace” crowd he’d likely be running for public office.

So count your blessings, and the next time you’re tempted to criticize the Reverend remember - as any aspiring young rapper can tell you - “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” and cut him a little slack. He’s just trying to make a living.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Okay, I ignored your complaints at first. I resisted your demands that the spokesmouths for the State Department be demoted from their JV status to intramural. However, based on this recent statement by Marie Harf – darling of the Mo Beta Sorority of the Traveling Pants – I’ve been forced to reconsider my position:

Thursday at the daily briefing, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf declined to acknowledge ISIS’ declaration of war with the Untied States of America.

When a reporter said,”The reality is ISIS has announced it’s in a war against America,” adding, “Right or wrong that is what they are saying.”

Harf replied, “Well, they can say whatever they’d like, but what I am making clear is that’s not what ISIL represents. And they don’t represent any religion. They are at war with everybody they come into contact with.”

Now, before you all pile on State’s Ms. Harf, let me point out that she’s only 33 years old – which translates to about 14 in sorority-girl years. How much intellectual maturity can you expect, really?

“Well, you can say whatever you’d like, but what I am making clear is that there’s no ‘I’ in ISIS and your insistence that it stands for ‘Islamic’ does not change that fact.”

I’m as mystified as you; I don’t know how Marie got her job as Deputy State Department Spokesperson either. Maybe - like Tommy “Hey Dude that was like two years ago” Vietor and Anita “From Campaign Driver to top Obama aide” Breckenbridge - she used to drive Big Guy around too. Apparently chauffeuring is a real resume builder and a great career path:

This should remind readers that the boyish and immature Tommy “Hey Dude, that was like two years ago” Vietor also went from driver/flunky to a top post at the National Security Council.

“In order to comply with the new Obama era EPA regs, American Electric Power, which supplies a major portion of the electricity used on the east coast, will be closing almost one quarter of their coal fired plants between now and next June. This is because they were economically unable to come into compliance with the new regulations in the impossibly short window of opportunity offered by the EPA. This is going to reduce the total surge capacity available for some of our most densely populated areas just when we may get hit with weather related demand spikes beyond anyone’s control.”

And speaking of corn, that reminds me of flyover country - which is exactly where I am right now!

Oh look! That must be Michigan down below!

I’m scheduled for my annual systems check and update at Hill Air Force Base in Utah next week and since the Wons need both Air Force Won and Air Force Won Too for shuttling various relatives, friends, acquaintances, Little Bo & Sunny and minor government functionaries back to Washington today, I’m flying commercial.

Butt guess who’s sitting right in back of me! Mia Love! Honest! I didn’t wish to intrude by asking if I coul transimaging her, butt trust me, it’s definitely Mia:

And in case there was any doubt, I can tell it’s her by the way the entire flight crew is fawning all over her. She’s obviously one their favorite regulars.

And she seems just as nice as you would have expected. She’s running for Congress again this November and I think she’s got a really good chance. Since she seems right at home in flyover I’m rooting for her.

So that’s the highlight of my trip so far. If you happen to be sitting next to me - either by the window or the aisle - please don’t give me a harsh stare as I try to contort my rather rigid frame to conform to the space allocated to the middle seat. And don’t offer to buy me a drink either - I’m not allowed to accept gratuities. That’s way above my pay grade. That privilege is reserved for presidential appointees.

So I’m going to be a bit jet-lagged and time zone challenged for the next few days, please bear with me. I will do my best to report any breaking news from any of the hot spots around the globe created by Big Guy’s leading from behind. And that included Ferguson, MO as the “Gentle Giant” is laid to rest by Presidential appointee, Al Sharpton, Chief Purveyor of Racial Justice. Now him - youcan buy a drink.

The Reverend Al: pimping for racial justice since 1987

Meanwhile, as a very early Labor Day is right around the corner, enjoy what’s left of summer; butt remember to wear your sunscreen: